I decided to try faceting an x-cube! X-cubes are basically fancy glass, so the material itself has little value, but the crazy colors they throw around when faceted really make them a fun material to experiment with.

For those curious, I oriented the X on my girdle, at 96 and 48.

Here is the link to the still photo

And here's a photo of the original material

Material: x-cube (dichroic glass) Measurements: 5.990 ct, 12.47 mm x 12.41 mm Design: Heart of Nines by Robert Strickland

Okay not really! It's just nanosital, which is a synthetic material very similar to glass. Gemstones always look alarmingly tasty, but this one was so reminiscent of a green Jolly Rancher when I polished it that I just had to give it an appropriate staging.

Design is "Green Lion" by Scott Laborie - several other faceters had been talking about this design as one of their favorites and after cutting it, I can see why! Strongly recommended by me now as well :) 24.0 cts, 19.6 x 12.7 mm

(Only one Jolly Rancher was harmed in the making of this photo op)

Spinny video can be found here, if you want to see it in sparkly action (and a nice proportionate girdle): https://pxlmo.com/p/meggied90/675122420686447993

I saw another faceter experimenting with frosting the edges between facets and the result was so intriguing I decided to copy the idea. It created such a cool snowflake effect in this aquamarine!

I finally have a gem that is showcased better as a still photo than a video. 🤯

5.94 cts, 10.78mm

Design (unfrosted) is Sparkle Six by Wayne Emery (can be found on the USFG website)

Just finished faceting this monster over the weekend. This thing was so dang easy to polish it felt a little suspicious if I am being perfectly honest. Overall I am extremely happy with my results. Even the girdle!

12.3 cts, 12.4mm, design is Jumper by Arya Akhavan. The rough was acquired from Tom's Box of Rocks.

I just tried cutting moissanite for the first time and goodness gracious, it took forever at the prepolish and polish steps, I assume because of the mohs hardness. After spending ungodly hours on that polish I will never again complain about polishing quartz.

I know, I know - FAT GIRDLE. It doesn't look so comically big on the dop, I swear my camera adds 0.1 mm!

7.98 mm, 2.84 cts, design is Mind Games by Arya Akhavan

I took on a design way beyond my skill level just to see how I would fare. I didn't leave quite enough material for my crown so please ignore the small divot in the center of the table, as well as the occasional missed meetpoint. Learning experiences abound!

While taking my video I notice my table polish has an annoying streak across it at just the exact right angle of light. I polished the hell out of that table using my BATT lap and 60k Pandimonium - so how did I accidentally create this streaking? Did the lap need more lubricant maybe? Or not enough 60k? Or too much...? Argh!

Design is Superpear 96 by Robert Long & Norm Steele

12 x 9.3 mm, 7.7 cts

Synthetic corundum (sapphire)

Amethyst (unknown location), 2.085 carats, 8x1 mm x 5.8 mm, design is Spellbound by Jeff Rhonemus.

A few months back I was at a gem show, and a vendor was selling large bags of amethyst stones for very cheap, as she thought they were all unusable junk. I bought the lot and I don't agree with the vendor - I think about half the stones do have facet material in them, they just need some trimming.

This stone is one of those "junk" amethysts, after removing the cloudy parts of it. There is one inclusion you can see in the video: as it rotates away there is a line that looks like a hair inside the top right corner. I consider it a pretty trivial inclusion, since you can barely see it straight on.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the stone before cutting off the cloudy parts. Here is an example of some other rocks from the bag that I think might have hidden potential too (ignore the silver sharpie on some):

(Sorry not sorry for the Skyrim reference in the title, I just picked the game up again after a long hiatus and it seemed fitting.)

Fire opal, 0.335 carats, Princess Trilliant by A. Collins

This tiny beauty has quite a few mistakes in it, if you look past the pretty sparkles.

As soon as I started cutting the crown, the thing flew off my dop and clear across the room! The landing caused some minor chips on the pavilion, one of which is extremely obvious in the video.

I did my best trying to realign the thing but it took several attempts, and even with my best effort it was not quite right. My girdle is not level, and several of my meet points don't actually meet.

I wanted to share this one so any other newbs or aspiring faceters don't feel intimidated by all of our beautiful cuts - we make mistakes too! Sometimes many of them all at once, and we spend hours coming up with as many curse words as we can think of while we're trying to fix them! But even this dumpster fire turned out rather pretty, all things considered. :)

And when I say this thing is tiny, I really mean it. American penny for scale:

I wanted to gift my maid of honor something special, since she really went above and beyond in my wedding planning. She loves giant flashy diamonds (which of course I don't cut... and can't afford!), and was thrilled to learn I was giving her this massive 14 carat beauty.

I don't know what kind of jewelry setting she's going to put it in but knowing her, it'll be beautifully ostentatious and she'll be showing it off for the next twenty years at least!

I bought myself one of those macro lenses to try to get better photos and goodness, those things are unforgiving! My polish looked fine to the naked eye but the macro lens had no hesitation showing me every streak I didn't perfectly polish out. Guess I need to spend more time on my final polish - and y'all get more videos without the macro lens for now so I can hide my shame. 😂

Cubic zirconia, 14.130 carats, design is Gram Princess by Jeff Graham.

Edit: here is a photo of it beside my hand, for better scale: https://pxlmo.com/p/meggied90/637487568069056822

For those just interested in the stone information and not the backstory: Citrine, 3.015 carats, design is Gram Princess by Jeff Graham (optimized in GCS to work for citrine RI).

And a quick THANK YOU to this community for pushing me to get that 3k lightning lap - quartz and I are finally getting along thanks to your advice, as you can see from this beauty.

THE BACKSTORY

My grandfather was a hobby gemcutter, and passed away over 20 years ago. When my grandmother finally passed a few years ago and we were clearing the estate, we found several cut stones of his left behind and divided them across the family - and I inherited 3 square-cut citrines.

Last year my partner proposed, and we set our wedding date for November 12, 2023 (yes next week! aaah!). I decided I would commission those citrines into a pendant as my "something old" and "something new", and a way to symbolically have my grandfather at my wedding.

After I had gotten the pendant back and was showing it to a friend, they pointed out to me that citrine is November's birthstone, the same month I chose for our wedding... which was a wonderfully spooky coincidence.

My dad is generously paying for our venue, and he has no idea I have started to cut gems like his father used to do. I plan on surprising him by giving him his own square citrine, cut by me, as a thank you for his generosity and for attending. I intentionally chose a princess cut since, after all, I am his little princess. :)

I can't post my gem anywhere on social media lest my family see it and spoil the surprise, but I know none of them use Lemmy so here I am, sharing with you all!

(side note: handling my grandfather's stones and seeing that beautiful pendant is what spurred me to finally learn to cut my own, so there's my origin story too.)

My mentor gave me some leftover rough when he taught me, to include a small piece of lab sapphire. I wanted to try something more complex than the Andrew Brown cuts I was doing, so I found a round cut that looked fun and relatively easy, and it was conveniently already designed for sapphire. (Also it sparkled very pretty in Gem Cad Studio)

I'm extremely happy with my meet points on this, and it's my first where there's no mistakes! And my girdle is 0.43mm! I'm quite proud of this stone.

Seeing the final stone for the first time was an incredible experience, I forgot how to breathe when I first saw it off the dop. I hope seeing a final gem is always so exhilarating (don't tell me if it gets old 🤣)

Synthetic sapphire, 1.3 cts, design is Gamma Brilliant by Jeff Ford (I got it from the USFG website)

I cut my first peridot and I gotta say, much easier than the quartz by a mile. My confidence needed that boost. 🤣

I noticed when I googled the best way to polish peridot, there was quite a bit of debate in what was best, and no real clear right answer. I saw 100k diamond on a BATT lap, aluminum oxide, and chrome oxide all suggested. I tried the aluminum and it did okay, but took ages. What do you guys prefer?

(I have been advised my girdles are a smidgen too thick and I'll be putting my future stones on a diet. Whoops.)

Peridot, 2.795 ct, cut in DecaCheck Two by Andrew Brown

I feel like the garnet I cut first lulled me into a false sense of security. I did myself no favors picking a more complex cut, either. Quartz is ANNOYING!

The video mercifully does not show it, but my meetpoints are absolute trash on this stone. I used way too much force and popped it off the dop when polishing my pavilion, so my girdle and my crown don't quite align either.

I struggled heavily with the prepolish step, which in turn led to my polish taking ages. I'm currently using a Zinc+ with 8k Pandimonium which was dreamy on my garnet but the quartz was less enthusiastic about it. Am I just underestimating quartz? What do you guys use for prepolishing?

I just received my v5 last week and I've been working on my very first stone. Technically this is my second, but I FUBARed the first one beyond salvation so this one is my first "completed" stone.

It's a very included garnet, gifted to me by my teacher for practice. The design is Andrew Brown's Little Princess cut.

I'm experimenting with linking videos hosted on Pixelfed because in all honesty my gemstone photo skills suck and don't do this pretty little stone justice quite like the video does.